A Lesson In Altruism
by kusegoto
Summary: The gates are open; they can leave. David Tapp has other plans.


David's grip is tighter than Ace expected it to be. The threat of a _stern talking to_ is one thing, but the stare he gets from the former detective is harder than Ace was preparing himself for.

"Listen, darling—" Ace breaks with a hiss when David's hand somehow holds him even harder, his fingertips pressing rough into his thin wrist bones.

"Don't start with me, Ace." David pulls him away from the humming exit gate, freedom ripped away far more easier than it came. The red lights of the switch glow and warm David's tired—if lingering with fierce determination and tenacity—eyes, a better sight than the flushed crimson over Ace's pale hand. "You need to learn humility. This is going to be your first lesson."

"He'll be fine," Ace says, even when David's eyes narrow intoca harsher glare. "Look—no, it's not a _good thing,_ but we know you make it back eventually, right? The guy's got life in him, one bad trial's not going to break him."

The silence that follows starts to sit in Ace's mouth like a revelation. David doesn't look away, but Ace does, lowering his head and casting his eyes towards some sense grass not too far from where they stand, in the threshold between safety and terror. It starts to gnaw inside of him, teeth on his bones and tight in his chest.

David keeps looking at him like that.

"Stop looking at me like that."

There's a lot David could say. There's a lot he wants to say, but instead, he holds his tongue until Ace looks up, hand on the back of his head and scratching beneath one of his sunglasses' arms. "We're not—you're not—letting someone else suffer for your own freedom. I'll show you how it's done."

With one tug and his hand in his, David Tapp pulls Ace Visconti with him, through two rocks left on the MacMillan estate's haunted grounds and towards a haphazardly built shack in the distance. Ace adjusts his hat? sheepishly.

"Almost like you've got some experience," he mumbles, pointedly ignored and left to linger in the dark mist.

* * *

The old wood creaks under David's first step. It makes Feng Min jump, and turn her head—she's mid leap off the ground to sprint when she sees the two men creep into the shack.

"Jesus," she mutters, "walk a little lighter, old man."

"Where is she?" David asks, his hand tugging on Ace to lower themselves down to Feng's level, crouched close to the ground. Ace's knees do not agree with this decision.

"I think she went to the exits," Feng muses. "I was just... about to go down."

"Ladies first," Ace says, and the frown-and-stare combo given by both David and Feng might have broken another man's resolve.

Not Ace. He hasn't had a conscience in years.

Each step into the shack's basement creaks worse than the last, the sharp fear in each sigh of the wood sending itself up Ace's legs from the steps he takes behind David. The sound of cracking bones swirled with despair lingers in the air, and the sharp taste of blood cuts his tongue. The three round the bottom corner and see Jake Park's body hanging from an old hook as if he weighed nothing at all.

"Christ," Ace mutters, as Feng walks the final steps down to reach him.

"Help me with him," she murmurs, and Ace takes a few steps before David beats him there, carefully putting his hands under Jake's arms to lift him, with Feng supporting his waist. Jake's cry is guttural and thick with blood, and Ace winces for him.

Jake almost collapsed against Feng, but David is quick to support him. "Easy, easy."

Jake looks towards David through the sweat slicked hair presses against his forehead, the life in his complexion drained from the vicious wound in his shoulder. "Doors open...?"

David looks at Ace. "Closest one's waiting for you."

"He left me," Jake says, weak and empty, yet lingering with bitterness. "At the start—when we arrived, and she—"

"Wasn't intentional," Ace mutters, the hand back in his hair. "Would've just meant the both of us would be down here."

"That shouldn't matter—"

A beautiful song breaks fear into all four of their eyes.

Though distant, it floats through the air from a voice half-snarled, its own focus starting to tremble as the final hour of the trial begins to close. Maybe the fog carries sound, because the masked woman's song grows closer, like a territorial mother that seeks the intruder of her den.

And it gets closer.

"Carry him," Feng says, helping David shoulder more of Jake's heavy body before he has time to agree. David lowers himself a little more to help Jake's better arm over his shoulder. Ace doesn't have to be told twice to move, and he hurries himself up the stairs.

His heart pounds sharp in his ear. The taste of Jake's blood is swept away with the sharpness of the estate's cold air, and it burns his lungs. He can hear her song even louder, and it eclipses his vicious heartbeat. He turns his head for a moment to see Feng leading David and Jake out of the basement, and when he takes a step towards the exit, the silouhette of the Huntress stands in his way, her axe heavy in both hands.

Ace immediately does what he does best.

Ace begins to run.

The grass is soft beneath his feet and the air is sharp in his ears when he flees the shack. Rocks and walls lingering from former buildings obscure his path, a path he's not quite sure what it will lead to—but it's enough cover from the hatchet that soars past his head and embeds itself deep in the trunk of an ancient tree, and that's good enough for him.

What is meant to go through the mind of a fleeing victim? The last words they hope they get to say? All the things they regret they couldn't do, and hope they'll get the chance to again? Perhaps it is only meant to be means of survival, but that is simply not the case when your life is balanced on the edge of a hatchet's head. Maybe he's meant to think about who he's left behind and the last look David gave him. At the same time, he doesn't want that to be the last—so dwelling on it, as he'd say, is a bit of a downer.

The second hatchet misses as well. It flies past his legs and violently rolls on the ground, as Ace jumps over its handle as it comes to a stop in the tall grass. He runs around a rock and heads west (or what he thinks is west) to the beacon of violent hope in his horizon.

Ace runs, and he runs pretty well. The Huntress' song is like the first breath of vile air, and it burns with each breath he takes. He doesn't know how close she is. She doesn't have to be close, just has to make that one shot, the one that buries her blade deep in your back—

His vision becomes dirt and grass. The pain spread from his shoulder. He thinks she hit it.

Ace's arms spread far from his body, above his head with palms flat against the earth. His eyes are broken open, and somewhere, in the furthest corner of his mind, where two little angel-devil Aces live in their square shaped room where they share a bottle of wine that never goes empty as they watch what the real Ace does—he thinks his hat fell off somewhere. Ladies and gentlemen and esteemed guests of the crowd; Ace Visconti has been downed.

The Huntress walks to his body and rips the hatchet from his shoulder, the body heaving a disgusting sound with the crunch of bone and sting of blood. Her heavy boots walk off, towards the exit gate, which sits a frighteningly close distance from Ace's fading light. Somehow, he lifts his head, and in the fog, and mist, and glimmer of hatchets, and flash of red, and mass of people, and the colours of survivors, and the dreams he wants to have, and the mistakes he's made, he can see David, and only David.

Far away, in the light of a moon not in the sky, David stands between Jake Park, Feng Min, and a Huntress. He doesn't know where the energy comes from, but Ace pulls one arm forward to drag his body along, the mangled arm useless at his side. He crawls slowly, slugged and heavy, through dirt and mud to do—he doesn't know. Try to run, try to hide. He can taste freedom, but maybe that's the blood in his mouth.

The Huntress removes a hatchet from her belt, slick with the blood of a fallen gambler. She raises it, training her eye on which body to strike. David turns to flee, and her arm stretches back, and finally she throws the hatchet, far into the sky and cracking it against the brick arch.

She turns around, stumbling backwards. Ace's hand is tight on her flower printed shawl, and he grins with blood in his teeth. Her scream is visceral and worse than any spider god's crawl.

The air changes when the others escape into dark fog. Like the Entity knows only two fragmented souls remain, and allows the dread of a final hope to stay, even as the Huntress kicks Ace on to his back by the torn wound in his injured shoulder. His heave of pain is marked by the smile, a smile that knows what he's done, but it doesn't linger when the axe goes up, high, higher than the trained shot, and smashes down deep into his skull.

Darkness takes him. The pain, surprisingly, continues to rush at him, like the tidal wave of a nightmare.

* * *

He wakes up on a familiar bed, in familiar heat, with the motel door closed.

There's a haze over the furniture, old and out of date. Like a light mist that fills the room, soft and uncomfortably warm. When Ace turns his head, he sees David in the arm chair, in a black suit.

"Hey," he says, and doesn't get David's attention. "You guys get out alright?"

It's not a familiar vision, but he knows where he is. The plane of death. The Miami heat is just the same as it was when he left it and wandered into the fog, so maybe the forces of death are getting better at their recreation of peace.

David finally looks at him. Ace is in the same filthy clothes he was bisected in. David is clean shaved, in warm clothes, and smells like pine.

"Interesting way to die," Fake-David says, crossing one leg over the other.

"You're looking good," Ace admits, indulging in the apparition, eyes down and over the stretch of Fake-David's body. "A little more blood in me, and I'd might invite you over here."

Fake-David picks up a lit cigarette in an ash tray on the table next to him, but only observes it—he pinches it between his fingers, the plume of smoke lifting into the warm room. "You smoke?"

"Long time ago," Ace admits, looking up at the ceiling. It spreads into uneven patterns, like a dream with an unfinished landscape. "Guess it's been two years, give or take. You know what kidnapping can do to a man's memory."

"Yes, I suppose it is a kidnapping." Fake-David puts the cigarette down. Ace looks back over at him, and he can see the blood on his fingers from just out of his vision.

"How long will I be here?" Ace asks. Silence catches them again, and Fake-David appears at the foot of the bed in a blink's moment. Dreams and death work in strange ways.

"Why am I in your dream?" Fake-David asks instead, and Ace sighs.

"I secretly want to hook up with you, and dying was the only way to do it," Ace tries, and Fake-David rolls his eyes just as the real one would.

"Try again."

"God knew the only way for me to learn why I died was to send you?"

"Alessandro."

"God, babe, you know that drives me crazy," Ace says with the last of a grin, and forces himself up off his back and to a sitting position, leaning forward. "Let me try again."

He feels eager. It's unfamiliar. Usually, Fake-David ignores him. Fake-David turns to him. "Go on."

"You're here because if I died, I'd want to be with you."

Its a truth he feels his throat close up after uttering. Death brings out the strangest part of you, and his tongue feels heavy when he smiles. But he smiles, and the fear inside that torment itself of being truthful cannot burn itself on the exhilaration he feels at the change of death's scenery. Like a swarm of bats that tries to crash a wedding. Fake-David doesn't move. Ace is suddenly holding his hands in his own.

"Are you going to be angry with me when I'm back at the camp?" Ace asks, pulling Fake-David closer by his hands.

"I don't think I will." Fake-David looks at their hands, then to Ace's eyes. "You seem happier."

"Call it a lesson learned," he says with a grin, and he wants to kiss him, but there's a light outside his window, and that's his ride.

* * *

He awakes on one of the bedrolls made out of sheets stripped off a bed found in a trial. No pain rolls through his arm. His hat is at his side, with his sunglasses folded. The sky is black, darkened in patches by smoke.

His neck is painfully stiff. Ace looks over at Kate Denson's sillouhette, who in turn notices he's awake. Kate raises her hand to someone that Ace has a feeling he knows who, and she turns for a moment towards him, legs crossed.

"You had 'em all worried for you, darling," she says, leaning forward on her elbows.

"It's a habit of mine I've gotta break," Ace laments, sitting up slowly.

"Don't go rushin' yourself. God only knows what kinda state your bones oughta be in," she warns, then lifts her head to see David Tapp approaching. "Think the detective wants you all to himself."

"Thank you for bringing me over, Kate," David says instead, the steady, exhausted tone a calm warning of itself. Kate pushes herself to her feet and walks away, her shadow cast by the fire. David carefully takes her spot, sitting down on one of the wood logs, a little farther back from Ace. When Ace pulls himself forward, David notices, and then, it becomes unintentional.

"Wanted to tell you... thank you," David says, looking away from Ace with a hand on his neck. "That was brave of you."

"Wasn't getting out of there," Ace admits, the shade of a lament in his tone. "Couldn't just let you get hurt."

"That's—remarkably mature of you."

"C'mon, darling. You know I just need a point in the right direction from time to time."

David sighs. "I was going to apologize for the situation you got in, but you seem to be coping."

"Nothing a little death can't fix." Ace rolls his shoulder, and it pops in a familiar way. The old man way, not the death-by-hatchet way. "How's mis'er Park?"

"Recovering." David looks over his shoulder towards Jake's vague shape in the distance, the other David presumably hovering by his side. "I don't think he'll be talking to you for a while. He's irritated."

"I'm sure I'll manage without his fantastic conversation," Ace replies, pulling himself across the earth to sit next to David, mirroring his posture. "Had a dream with you in it."

"While you were... under?"

Ace nods. "You look good in a suit."

David nods, skeptically. "Mhm."

Ace leans against David, resting his hatless head on his shoulder. He feels barren without it. "I could dream about you forever."

"Are you complimenting me so I won't send you to apologize to Jake?"

"A little. But it's the truth."

David moves his hand and takes Ace's in his own. Ace closes his eyes, and David turns his head to rest his cheek against his hair.

"You're strange," David admits, and brings Ace's hand towards him to kiss his knuckles.


End file.
